February Art Challenge -- Albertese

[Albertese]

All right! So I hadn't planned to participate this month, as i won last month, so I'm sort of responding to my own challenge, which is a little weird...

But anyhow, here goes, I am doing a digital painting of the S.S. Valiant on it's way out to be lost forever along the galaxy's edge! Launched 2065 so it qualifies as Trek's version of the 21st Century. Here's a work in progress shot...




--Alex

 

[Kaiser]

Looks very good so far

 

[B.J.]

I wouldn't worry about entering your own contest. Heck, I've *won* my own contest before.

Very nice painting! What program are you using for this?

 

[TheLoneRedshirt]

Very nice work! I've always liked this design.

 

[Albertese]

Thanks guys!

Klaus, I'm using Photoshop CS5. I was inspired by following Vektor's Starship Polaris thread. His 2D over-paintings are so awesome I thought I'd try something along those lines myself.

--Alex

 

[B.J.]

I look like Klaus now?

 

[Klaus]

You should see someone about that, if so...

 

[Vektor]

Sweet. Are you using a Wacom tablet or something similar?

 

[Albertese]

I look like Klaus now?

D'oh! That's what I get for being an idiot!

--Alex

 

[Albertese]

Sweet. Are you using a Wacom tablet or something similar?

I am. It's an older one but it gets the job done. I'm crippled if I try to use a mouse with Photoshop.

What I really want is one where the tablet is the screen so there's no disconnect at all between hand and eye, but that's a bigger dream for a larger paycheck.

--Alex

 

[Vektor]

I've used both types. I love my Cintiq with the integrated screen, but the regular tablets have their own set of advantages and a lot of pros still swear by them.

This painting looks to be coming along very nicely, but I would make one suggestion: Use a separate layer to create a vanishing point and lay out some perspective guidelines. Your nacelles are slightly askew and the bridge module on the front is rotated counter-clockwise.

I love this kind of artwork even more than my 3D modeling stuff and I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

 

[Albertese]

Good idea, I was (obviously) just eyeballing the perspective. But I do have each separate component on a different layer.

Actually I noticed the starboard warp pod was all jacked up about two minutes after I posted it...

A lot of times what I'll do (though I haven't yet on this one) is look at the image flipped so it's a mirror image. I find that I look at a thing too long and I get used to it's wrongness and it seems right, but those errors stand out large when looking at the mirror image. Interesting...

--Alex

 

[Vektor]

Flipping an image left-to-right and sometimes even top-to-bottom is a very old trick for avoiding proportion and perspective issues. The old masters used mirrors in their art studios to accomplish the same thing. I didn't catch on to it until relatively recently myself but it definitely works.

 

[Albertese]

Yeah, I'm a dental technician by trade and sometimes if I'm working on a case making the front six teeth, I'll look at it in a mirror to find the asymmetries. I actually got that idea from reading about the masters.

In a similar vein, I understand computer animators will sometimes run walk animations backwards to see if it looks right. I remember seeing a behind-the-scenes feature on Jurassic Park where they did that to check the T-Rex run.

Cool stuff.

--Alex

 

[Ziz]

Yeah, I'm a dental technician by trade and sometimes if I'm working on a case making the front six teeth, I'll look at it in a mirror to find the asymmetries. I actually got that idea from reading about the masters.

But since very little on the human body is perfectly mirrored left/right, wouldn't slight differences look more natural in that application?

 

[Albertese]

Actually, yes. If I needed to have my own teeth done, I would insist on keeping the odd asymmetries of my natural teeth. However, the overwhelming majority of patients are having their teeth done for purely aesthetic reasons and they want super symmetrical teeth.

And actually it turns out that the asymmetries are usually along the incisal edge where the upper teeth wear along the lower teeth. The sides of the teeth ("transition line angles" in the tech jargon) are usually always pretty symmetrical even if the teeth don't always come in straight. And that's the part that it's hardest to get right. Hence the mirror.

--Alex